


thoughts between beers

by cirque_de_reves (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (But Cas is dead), (but he's coming back soon!!!), Dean Winchester Pines Over Castiel, HIT ME UP S13 EP5 I CANT FUCKING WAIT, M/M, Thursday May 18th
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 03:02:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12644838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cirque_de_reves
Summary: Cas is dead - and the cosmos might fucking well collapse around him, but Dean would still be here, thinking his name.(set immediately after the most recent episode, 13x04)





	thoughts between beers

There had been a Thursday in late May that was particularly beautiful, like the moment summer emerges from spring.

There had been a lake, and a house near it, and trees, and the sun setting over the valley ridge. It was peaceful, unbroken, and Cas had looked out over the water with such hope that it still steamed up from the ground where he died.

The world might as well have been drained of color, and the water might as well have been blood, and the sun might as well have gone supernova, showering ugly black sparks over the valley and the trees and the house by the lake.

They – the ashes - were each microscopic and mockingly heavy, at least twenty pounds an atom. And they settled in Dean’s pores in spiked crystals and melted into his arteries when he moved, replacing his livelihood with nothingness, and the world might as well have ended.

Trying to fight it wasn’t worth it, because it won, time after time, and Dean hated that the universe could shit on him like this without blinking and not even give him the time to think about it. Not that he wanted to, no, but the hatred for responsibility was back, biting at him and twisting his brain into pretzels and depriving him of sleep and sustenance until he feels like he’s got lead poisoning. He knows he’s been an orphan since the second Mary burst into flames on a ceiling somewhere in Kansas suburbia, but it seems so unfair that he doesn’t get to think of himself as somebody’s son anymore, that he never really got to.

And Cas is gone too, and it hurts like a missing limb. A phantom angel still spits out quiet one-liners sometimes, still cocks his head in Dean’s peripheral vision, and Dean forgets once or twice that he’s gone. Dean wishes it would last, the forgetting, but then he’s blitzed by what the angel blade sounded like when it cut him open.

He’s used to not having Mary. She had a history of staying dead, and Dean had a history of punching mirrors in school bathrooms, and of eating lunch in janitor’s closets so he could look at pictures of her and practice keeping a poker face so that when teachers asked him about his mom he wouldn’t kill them.

It was cruel that he had let himself smile at her, sweet and alive, for only a few short months, but it was starting to feel (reverently so) like they had never occurred in the first place.

But with Cas, Dean had seen him resurrected a million times. It didn’t matter that he never came back whole, because he would be back, and Dean could make him mixtapes he would _hear_ and write him sardonic grocery lists that he could pick up off the dining room table and squint at and _see_ , and he was hard to love sometimes, and a dumbass, but every second they were together was offhandedly satisfying. They fit.

Dean considers killing himself a few times, but what would that make him? Dead, and with no regard for his family’s sacrifices. Sam would bring him back, anyway. That, or he would follow suit, and then who would take out Lucifer Junior? Claire Novak?

Dean snickers ruefully.

When he’s trying to fall asleep, when he’s making coffee, when he’s showering or researching or listening to music that Thursday replays in his head over and over and over again, Cas dying, Mom dying, Jack thinking he can replace the two of them with that cluelessness he totes around like a body bag, and the apologies, and the awkward swoop of his hair. Dean’s not buying it.

Maybe if he gets Jack to kill him, it’ll knock some sense into Sam and he’ll gank the son of a bitch.

Wishful thinking.

Dean plugs into Zeppelin and accidentally pictures Cas doing the same, maybe bobbing his head experimentally or smiling or thinking of Dean.

_There had been a Thursday in late May that was particularly beautiful, like the moment summer emerges from spring…_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Usually my sad fics don't get much attention, so my expectations for this aren't high. (I also haven't really written in a while, and this was kind of me getting back on the horse.) What can I say? 13x04 was so fucking inspiring. If you just finished reading this (heck, it's only like 600 words) and you're on the cusp of some emotional breakdown, take some time to remember the way Cas looked in that meadow after he was cast out of the empty!!!! his trenchcoat swooshing around his knees, his I-punched-my-depression-in-the-face little smile, the sun streaming on his face, etc...  
> :,) is anyone else waiting for the reunion like it's gonna be the best thing since sliced bread? I SURE AM


End file.
